Smeggy Smurf:Crap, missed that one. You can have have your death panels and months of waiting for routine care all you want. Me as a capitalist prefers to be able to afford proper care in a timely manner because I'm not a useless socialist who needs to hide behind government's apron strings like a little biatch.

Have you ever talked to a Canadian about their healthcare waits? When they are sick they go to to the clinic, show them their card and they are seen that day.

Frederick:Is it not possible for employers to bundle health insurance into the employees already negotiated compensation package?

So that:previous salary without benefits = $X total compensationnew "salary and benefits" = $X total compensation

Obviously to the employee it means less salary but benefits, to the employer it's the same expense.

No. The employer loses the deduction that they get now plus they have a fine to pay if they have over 50 full time employees (you know that that's going to come into play as to how much they kick down to the employees total compensation). Then the employees have to pay taxes on any gross monetary compensation that they get from their employer (it can't be tagged as healthcare on their W4). Then the deductible part of that on the employees taxes doesn't even start to count until your healthcare costs, including premiums, exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income. So lets say you have 50k agi. The first 5k is 100% taxable.

In other words the employee will take it in the shorts both coming and going. This is the way that it was set up on purpose. Why? I have no idea but I suspect that it has something to do with Uncle Sam dipping some more money out of you and your employers pockets.

Which I still find amazing, since the PPACA was based off of Romney's healthcare plan from his time as the Governor of Massachusetts. The GOP insisted on this plan, and did everything possible to block what Obama really wanted, which was a single-payer, truly universal healthcare plan. Then when Obama agrees with the GOP so some form of healthcare reform can get passed, suddenly it's "Obamacare", and the worst thing ever, according to the GOP.

Fark the GOP and their BS. We should have single-payer, universal healthcare, like most of the rest of the First World nations do. But instead we are stuck with this system that is basically a handout to for-profit health insurers, and the GOP get to blame the Dems for it, when it was their idea in the first place!

You mean "So what if your 2.2% profit margin is suddenly reduced to a loss?" You have some interesting ideas about how much actual companies make, especially during a long recession.

Who has a 2.2% profit margin?

Most publicly owned corporations. It's all a song and dance.. The administration looks at gross revenue, and then spends any excess money on expansion until the margins are as low as possible while still being considered acceptable. Why? Because spending the company profits on growth drives up the share price, which makes the executives far more money than paying out dividends to shareholders.

These companies dont REALLY operate on razor thin margins.. They just want you to think that. Welcome to corporate America.

zepillin:Have you ever talked to a Canadian about their healthcare waits? When they are sick they go to to the clinic, show them their card and they are seen that day.

For Routine care? Maybe. For worse stuff? You can google that on your own. Of course, those who can afford it come to the US and pay out of pocket, rather than being left to writhe in pain until the Canadian health care system gets around to them.

My girlfriend's employer called a bunch of their 32-hour-a-week employees together last spring and cautioned them that starting in late 2014, they'd have to truncate them to 29.5 hours a week because they simply don't have the budget to offer the mandated standard for insurance to a couple hundred part-time employees. They'd have to hire some more hands to cover those 2.5-hour shortfalls on the schedule.

The employer in question? A school district. The employees in question are teaching assistants (from mothers who come in and read a couple days a week, to special-ed assistants who pretty much put in teacher hours during and after school for a 32-hour paycheck).

My girlfriend said that the questions posed to the superintendent that afternoon were at times amusing. Why not cut teachers' pay and divert that money into healthcare costs? (Contracts, unions, and you can't shorten the hours the teachers need to be on hand.) Why not pay everyone as if they were working a 32-hour day? (See above note about needing to hire more assistants.) Why couldn't the superintendent volunteer for a pay cut to fund healthcare? (Because he'd find a better-paying job elsewhere.)

They do offer health benefits already. It'd take my girlfriend's entire take-home to cover the premium. So she switched jobs this school year to another district, where she's also not getting any benefits, but hopefully will be able to snag a job with benefits next year.

It's easy to point the finger at Big Retail and corporate America. But these are decisions that all employers with a part-time labor pool have to consider. Frankly, I'm surprised we don't hear more about school districts having to make the same cuts and tough choices that Staples and Target are making.

pwn3d781:It's easy to point the finger at Big Retail and corporate America. But these are decisions that all employers with a part-time labor pool have to consider. Frankly, I'm surprised we don't hear more about school districts having to make the same cuts and tough choices that Staples and Target are making.

It's not a "loophole", it's a deliberate provision of the law. lawmakers are not that stupid that they don't understand the consequences of making a provision like this, otherwise they would not have put a cut-off at a certain number of hours.

Companies have been doing this since the beginning of time. Scheduling employees for 39.99999 hours a week in order to avoid the 40 hours to they are not considered full time and they don't have to pay benefits.

Eponymous:Lee Jackson Beauregard: How's banning abortion and birth control and defunding Planned Parenthood (in Jesus' name we pray) working out for you?

Wow....is that the best strawman argument you can create?

It's not a strawman argument if it's true. Or maybe the Publicans *don't* call for banning abortion and birth control and defunding Planned Parenthood (in Jesus' name we pray) and then rant that the Welfare Queens are "breeding like rats," as Thunderpipes said?

Radioactive Ass:pwn3d781: It's easy to point the finger at Big Retail and corporate America. But these are decisions that all employers with a part-time labor pool have to consider. Frankly, I'm surprised we don't hear more about school districts having to make the same cuts and tough choices that Staples and Target are making.

Ahem...

Hey, that's great, I'm glad someone's bringing it up. I don't monitor every article on the subject and I won't pretend that I do.

I'm just surprised that, as often as we see the "OMG (big-box retailer) is cutting hours because they don't want to pay for health insurance!" articles, we don't see the same thing regularly about school districts, or the ensuing flamewars on Fark to go along with it.

Because otherwise, socialism! It be vastly cheaper all around for a single payer Government ran healthcare, but Congress would never allow it since it told the voters that would lead to death panels and the end of the universe and would get voted out of office by pant wetting voters.

Descartes:Staples is trying to minimize costs by following the rules that Obama set?I would hope any company would do that.

Well played Staples, well played.

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What rules? There's no rule preventing Staples from providing benefits to anyone in their company. There's also no rule that Staples can't face a public backlash regarding this policy, just as Papa John's and Applebees did. Look what happened to them.

cameroncrazy1984:What rules? There's no rule preventing Staples from providing benefits to anyone in their company. There's also no rule that Staples can't face a public backlash regarding this policy, just as Papa John's and Applebees did. Look what happened to them.

It going to be very hard to "Backlash" against when every part time or low income employer does this (as both private and public entities have already started to do). What? Are you gonna stop sending your kids to school? Stop eating at every restaurant out there? Have fun with that. You can't boycott everything you know.

As to Walmart they did it because they were already losing customers due to chronic under staffing, not because of some imagined backlash over something that wouldn't be in effect for over a year. Let's see how that works out in a year shall we? Say after the next xmas rush when the mandate actually kicks in and they know what their premiums will be?

How about we do this: Employers no longer offer any healthcare whatsoever. They use the money to invest in employee retirements or whatever. Then everyone has to buy health insurance directly off of the exchanges.

CtrlAltDestroy:Because we have a for-profit healthcare system. So good health isn't seen as a right (which seems to fly in the face of the preamble to our constitution).

The level of ignorance responsible for statements like this is at the core of basically every left vs. right argument about economics and socialism. When you have no idea what a right actually is, what the word means, and base your arguments on your faulty understanding, it's no wonder there's conflict.

Here's a hint to perhaps set you on the right path: Rights are about what you are free achieve, not what others are obligated to provide. There is a difference between your ability to exercize a right, and your freedom to do so if you have the ability. One is guaranteed, the other is not.

I do merchandising work (as well as product retrievals) and every merchandising company I have applied to has told me the same thing: Working over 29 hrs/week is verboten and, doing so without proper authorization can result in termination. Obamacare requirements are given as the rationale.

KarmicDisaster:That should attract even more Top Quality help for their stores, that should help their bottom line. "If they can get to the interview, hire them".

Well, yes and no. If\when everyone starts doing this with their part time force it'll become more common to see people working two part time jobs in two different companies. The main sticking point will probably be juggling schedules. That would even it out as time goes by.